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For the second year in a row, Dipoto pulled off moves at a breakneck pace as he assembled a team around Seattle's four stars -- ace Felix Hernandez, second baseman Robinson Cano, designated hitter Nelson Cruz and third baseman Kyle Seager.

Dipoto completed a major-league-high 11 12 trades in the offseason, bringing his trade total to 35 36 since taking over as M's GM in September 2015. (Dipoto acquired A's minor league pitcher Dillon Overton in exchange for minor league catcher Jason Goldstein on Thursday afternoon, hours after Seattle's pre-spring training luncheon with reporters at Safeco Field.)

In Dipoto's first season with the club, Seattle won 86 games, up 10 from their 2015 total. As the team prepares for its second campaign under Dipoto and manager Scott Servais, expectations are heightened.

"You don't get those players to rebuild," Dipoto said Thursday. "You get those players to win. And our job is to build a roster around that quartet of players that will allow them to perform to the best of their abilities."

Cano, Cruz and Seager combined to hit .288 with 112 home runs and 307 RBIs for a team that scored 768 runs in 2016, good for third in the American League. And while Hernandez battled through a subpar season by his lofty standards (going 11-8 with a 3.82 ERA), Seattle ranked sixth in the A.L. in runs allowed with 707.

Dipoto's focus this offseason was to make the team better defensively and on the basepaths, which he thinks he's accomplished with the series of deals that added athletic players in infielder Jean Segura and outfielders Jarrod Dyson and Mitch Haniger. The deal with Arizona that brought over Segura and Haniger cost Dipoto former prized pitching prospect Taijuan Walker, so he went out and acquired veterans Drew Smyly and Yovani Gallardo in a flurry of January deals in order to bolster veteran depth in the rotation.

Dipoto hopes the moves push a club facing a 15-years-and-counting playoff drought over the top, but he also hoped he was able to bolster the team's weaknesses without diminishing its strengths -- or mortgaging the future by dealing away top prospects. He noted that only the Jan. 11 deal that sent 20-year-old Luiz Gohara to Atlanta in exchange for reliever Shae Simmons and outfielder Mallex Smith -- who was then flipped to Tampa Bay in the deal for Smyly later in the day -- involved a highly touted youngster.

"We've done it without stripping the minor leagues," Dipoto said. "I think that is a narrative that's just wrong."

Despite the myriad moves, there's continuity at the top this year with both Dipoto and Servais returning. Servais, coming off of his first year helming a team at any level, said expectations have changed after using much of last year to establish the team's culture and emphasis on teaching and controlling the strike zone both offensively and from the mound.

"I'm looking at it a little bit differently this year," Servais said. "I think a lot of it has to do with our environment around our team. The team understands myself and the coaching staff, expectation-wise how we're going to work, how we're going to prepare. I think it makes it easier for the players. There's less anxiety there."

Servais hopes the continuity will allow the club to get off to a slightly better start in 2017, which it will need to do if the Mariners are to make a push for the postseason in a very competitive A.L. West and with a schedule that left them with just seven home games in the crucial month of August.

After improving so much in year one of the Dipoto/Servais regime, the players know how close they are to breaking through, according to starter James Paxton.

"We know how important each game is," he said ,"and all those small things that we do on a day-to-day basis can make the difference at the end of the year. I think it should give this team a lot of confidence knowing that we are that close, and that the possibility is there for us."

Making a playoff spot in 2017 would certainly buoy a fanbase whose memories of postseason baseball have faded over the last decade and a half, but selling out to break the drought won't replace Dipoto's ultimate goal of building a consistent winner.

"This was a team that was built to win, and win now," he said. "But we're not stripping the organization in the effort to win now as the only option. This is what we intend to be a sustainable product to win year in and year out."